TheWilloughbian

Hair has been problematic. The best anyone has been able to pull off is wigs to my knowledge. Even then those have issues with the mesh being doubled.

I differ from 3aq, in that I manually install a lot of mods. Many people would probably freak at the sight of my data folder and the many, many loose files contained therein. But, as he states there are some advantages to MO2 in certain situations. It's just easier for me to have the files in my data folder with all the tinkering I like to do. With the rig you are running you're not really going to need to worry too much about every little optimization. It's mostly people with slower machines that have to deal with that. That's not to say it won't pay off to educate yourself about them. If you're going to use SKSE64, make back ups of your Skyrim.EXE and SkyrimLauncher.exe and stash them someplace safe. Then take measures to keep SSE from updating without your permission. If you need more help with this let me know.

I have never cleaned the master files. It's never been an issue for me. There's that quest in Markarth that will mess with followers. I have run into that. Never had them just had them disappear for no reason though, much less and leave their armour running around.

I never had Oldrim. The debate on this subject is endless. It's really up to you. Some say SSE is far more stable. With SKSE64 out SSE is catching up mod-wise. Many of the hardcore modders use both, as the SSE CK can't generate LIP files and mods are not reverse compatible. So, yeah, the answer "both" is valid if you like. I, personally have never regretted choosing SSE. But, then again, I enjoy converting and creating mods. Sorry I can't be more definitive. I guess the choice depends on your reasons for playing the game.

There's a lot of different tings you can do. If you want to avoid using mods, then tweaking the INIs is the way to go. http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Skyrim_INI There's is also BethINI, which will help you do much of the tweaking in a user friendly fashion. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4875/ There are also some mods which will increase fog distance. If you want see what that might look like, type setfog 20000,250000 into the console while in an exterior cell on a clear day. You can vary those values, the ones I have posted are rather high end. I think stock is like 0,6000 , which looks like hell if you ask me. In my opinion you will get the some best visual improvement from texture mods, which can be swapped in and out with relative ease. As far as which is/are the best one/s everyone has their favorite/s I supposed. I use a mix of several. Some are close to the vanilla textures just a higher quality, some will give the game a completely different look. You can spend a lot of time looking at texture mods. Some of the Oldrim ones will work with SSE. Though I think not the landscape textures. People geek out and spend lots of time getting the game to look just the way they want. I think you'll find that there is always another tweak to try. It really can become an obsession. If you really want to geek out and your PC can handle it, you might want to look into ENBs. I don't mess with those too much as my rig isn't quite that powerful. It's not a potato by any means, it's just that ENBs are resource intensive. But they can make the game look amazing. Anyhow.. Have fun with it. Give it six months and you'll have a load order with 170 plus mods in it. Oh, and one thing I would recommend is an NPC hair replacer. It will make a big difference. There's a couple good ones.

That's kind of the issue. Not that Bethesda updated/patched the game, but that there is no option in Steam to decline the update and still be able to play the game. To get around it, you have to set C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\appmanifest_489830.acf to read only and set Steam to only update Skyrim when you launch it. Then you keep Steam in offline mod. But, you need to do all this before Steam finds out that there is an update, or you'll have to manually edit the appmanifest. Which isn't hard, but you do need to know what to edit.

Oh! You're talking about the launcher. About that I have no idea. Sorry. I misunderstood. I just use a desktop shortcut to launch SKSE64. Might need to rescan for games, maybe?....

It won't. I doesn't work like that.

Well, you can delete that "floating ring". Right click, remove branch. As for moving skeleton nodes, it can be done. You need to open the skeleton you want to edit in nifskope and track down the weapon node you want to move and right click and choose edit. I've never had any luck with changing rotation though, only distance from the body.

It can be done. It will help if you have NifUtilsSuite. You might be able to do it with Outfit Studio and Nifskope, as well. Basically You'll need some way to turn your mesh into an OBJ and then into an SSE compatible NIF. Then use Nifskope to graft it on to a weapon node.

Considering the purpose of the latest patch, it's more of a nuisance than anything. Then again, after the first time an auto update messed up my game, I made damn sure that the game can't update unless I say so. However, I also know to keep backups of the Skyrim EXEs, like all SKSE64 users should do.

I have Hearthfire. Can't plant apples. I know there's mod that do it though.

I don't think apple trees or the ability to plant apples is part of the vanilla game. I'm pretty sure that has to be a mod letting you do that. At least I know that I can't plant apples in my game. I tried and no luck.

Sure thing.

This is why Steam stays in offline mode. Thanks for the heads up.

Yeah, What you are seeing is more Nifskope related. There are different types of nodes and shapes that can be used. Chances are the root node is an NiNode rather than a BSFadeNode, which is no big deal as far I know.

It's probably not a big deal. But if you rally want track it down, it is the nif that's causing it. Without the mesh in front of me I couldn't really tell you anymore than that though.

Looks nice. I'll have to try it again.

I could go for a bit of platforming action in Skyrim.

I had to chuckle at this. Anyhow. Are you using XLODGen? I tried it, but learned quickly that it was for more advanced users. I couldn't figure out how to get the detail level on the terrain LOD meshes right. I ended up having a really blocky map an bad LOD at the outer edges of my worldspace. I'm sure it was something I was doing wrong, but I got tired of messing with it. So i just used a couple of the meshes to fix the bad ones generated by oscape.

Yeah, CC seems to cater to console gamers more than the modders. I'm just saying If Bethesda did something more like this with their game engine I'd be very into it. I just don't see much community support for content that pushes outside the boundaries of what is "lore friendly" to the specific games. Anything Sci-fi or modern in Skyrim/TES is usually met with "it should in Fallout" and such. It's a shame because there's a lot of potential in a High Fantasy/Sci-fi blend in The Elder Scrolls. For some reason the idea of Khajiit with laser rifles battling an evil wizard an his robot minions just appeals to me. I'm just saying, I wish there was this variety of content for the CK. I get tired of looking at the same Nordic ruins. More Velothi stuff would be very welcome in my data folder. There's a little bit out there. For instance, Shadows of Morrowind has some very cool assets. Anyhow... I can wish. I don't really know much about unity/unreal though. But my interest is growing rapidly. Looks like I'm gonna need to start working new software into my somewhat limited fun budget$

You know, I have been looking at this Unreal market place for a little bit, and it's really darn cool. It's a shame that Creation Club isn't more like this. That's the thing that is severely lacking with Creation kit is new building kit assets. There's a few user made ones that are really nice, but not anywhere near what's available for Unreal. I wish I had the money for all the stuff I want.

Unreal Engine uses the Filmbox (fbx) format for its meshes. I am not sure if they are still using DDS for textures or not. Cool. FBX means that they can be opened in blender. So conversion to NIF shouldn't be a problem. Too bad about the licensing, though.

Yeah, there are some models that I would love to have for the CK. What format do they use for the meshes and textures?

That looks like artifacts caused by an overworked/overheated graphics card. What kind of GPU are you running?